What is a 301 redirect?
301 versus 302, 307 and 308, what a permanent redirect actually passes, and the redirect-everything-to-the-homepage move that turns into a soft 404.
A 301 redirect is a server instruction that says a page has moved permanently to a new address, and sends anyone — a visitor or a search engine — on to that new URL automatically. It is the standard, correct way to move or retire a page without losing the traffic and ranking it had built up, because it carries almost all of the old page’s accumulated signals to the new one.
The status codes, told apart
A redirect is an HTTP response with a 3xx status code, and the specific code tells the browser and the crawler how to treat it.
301 — Moved Permanently. The page has a new home for good. Signals transfer, and Google eventually drops the old URL from the index in favor of the destination. This is what you want for the large majority of redirects.
302 — Found (temporary). The move is temporary; keep the original URL indexed because it will be back. Correct for genuine short-term cases — an A/B test, a seasonal page, a country redirect — and wrong for a permanent move.
307 and 308. The stricter modern equivalents of 302 and 301 respectively, which preserve the request method (they do not turn a form submission into a plain page request). For everyday content moves, 301 and 302 remain the ones you will reach for; 307 and 308 matter mostly for applications and APIs.
What a 301 actually passes
A permanent redirect consolidates the old page’s link equity and relevance onto the destination. For years the caveat was that a little was lost in the hop; Google has since said 3xx redirects lose no PageRank. The important qualifier is relevance: a redirect passes its value cleanly only when the destination is a close match for what the old page was about. Redirect a discontinued blue widget to the red widget page and the signal largely carries; redirect it to the homepage and Google treats the redirect as a soft 404 — the destination is so unrelated that it is functionally a “not found”, and the equity evaporates.
When to use one
The permanent cases are the everyday backbone of a tidy site:
Moving to HTTPS (http:// → https://), settling on one hostname (www → bare domain or the reverse), enforcing a trailing-slash convention, changing a URL structure or slug, merging two pages into one, and retiring a page in favor of the most relevant surviving one. In each case the goal is the same: one canonical address that everything points at, with every old variant redirecting to it.
Chains, loops, and the mistakes to avoid
Redirect chains. A redirects to B, B redirects to C. Browsers follow it, but each hop adds latency and Google may stop following a long chain before it reaches the end. Always redirect straight to the final destination, and when you add a new redirect, update the old ones to skip the middle. Redirect loops. A points to B and B points back to A; the page never loads at all. Redirecting everything to the homepage. The soft-404 trap above, at scale — it looks like you preserved the URLs but you threw away their value. Redirecting URLs that are still in your sitemap or internal links. Update those to point at the destination directly, so you are not sending Google and visitors through a hop you could remove.
How to check yours
Our redirect checker follows a URL’s full redirect path and shows every hop, the status code at each step, and where it finally lands — which is how you catch a chain, a loop, or a 302 that should have been a 301. The HTTP header checker shows the raw response headers for a single URL when you need to confirm the exact status code a server is returning. If Search Console is reporting pages under the page with redirect status and you are not sure whether that is a problem, that guide explains when it is normal and when it is not. Or run a full site check to find redirect issues across the whole site at once.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a 301 redirect?
- A 301 redirect is a server instruction telling browsers and search engines that a page has moved permanently to a new URL, and forwarding them there automatically. It is the standard way to move or retire a page without losing its traffic and rankings, because it consolidates almost all of the old page's accumulated ranking signals onto the new address.
- What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?
- A 301 is permanent: it tells Google the move is final, transfers the old URL's signals to the new one, and eventually drops the old URL from the index. A 302 is temporary: it keeps the original URL indexed because it is expected to return. Using a 302 for a permanent move is a common mistake, as it holds ranking signals on a URL you no longer use.
- Does a 301 redirect pass SEO value?
- Yes. Google has stated that 3xx redirects, including 301s, pass PageRank without loss. The important condition is relevance: the value transfers cleanly only when the destination closely matches what the old page was about. Redirecting a page to a genuinely related replacement preserves its signals; redirecting it to an unrelated page like the homepage is treated as a soft 404 and loses them.
- When should I use a 301 redirect?
- Use a 301 for any permanent move: switching to HTTPS, settling on one hostname such as www versus the bare domain, changing a URL or slug, merging two pages, or retiring a page in favor of the most relevant surviving one. The goal in each case is a single canonical address that every old variant redirects to. Use a 302 only when the change is genuinely temporary.
- What is a redirect chain and why is it bad?
- A redirect chain is when one URL redirects to a second, which redirects to a third, and so on. Browsers follow it, but each hop adds latency, and Google may stop following a long chain before reaching the end, so signals do not fully transfer. Always redirect straight to the final destination, and when adding a new redirect, update older ones to skip the intermediate steps.
- Can I redirect an old page to my homepage?
- You can, but you usually should not. Redirecting a specific retired page to the homepage is treated by Google as a soft 404, because the homepage is not a relevant replacement for that page's content, so the old page's ranking value is lost rather than preserved. Redirect to the most closely related surviving page instead; only use the homepage when there is genuinely no better match.